In the operation of water cooled nuclear reactors, tritium is a direct product of nuclear fission. Tritium has a very short biological half life in the human body of 7 to 14 days which reduces the total effects of single-incident ingestion and precludes long term bioaccumulation of tritium from the environment. As tritium is not a strong beta emitter, it is not dangerous externally or simply through contacting a person's skin. However, tritium can be a radiation hazard when it is inhaled, ingested via food stuff, ingested in water, or absorbed through the skin.
In the nuclear industry, tritium is a direct product of the operation of nuclear power plants. When a nuclear fuel rod becomes spent through use in the nuclear reactor, it is stored for up to five years or longer in what is known as a spent fuel pool in order to cool the spent fuel rod and rid the spent fuel rod of its radioactive components.
Tritium control and recovery needs to be considered in the nuclear plant fuel cycle since production is not a goal of the reactor. Tritium does represent a personnel and environmental radiological hazard in sufficient concentrations. Because tritium concentration in the nuclear storage pools can be relevantly high, a very small amount of tritiated water can affect a large amount of ground water. Further, tritiated water has the same chemical characteristics as regular water, which means that the tritiated water can spread through evaporative loss and redeposit via subcooling condensation on the external surfaces within the spent fuel pool room.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to reduce the migration of tritiated water from the spent nuclear fuel pool.